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Most people who go to Hawaii spend a lot of money on two basic things: Airfare and hotel accommodations. You can mitigate the price of airfare by points or planning way ahead of time. Combining them with hotel and car can definitely help. But if you do a little research and maybe talk to people who frequent the H.I., they can help reduce the cost and spend your cheddah (cash for you Ebonics challenged) on other overpriced things like food and tours.

The Bus, Hawaii's bus system, is incredibly convenient and cheap. There's even an app called Da Bus that you can download that will give you real time arrivals and maps. Combine that with Google Maps and you got the islands in the palm of your hand. Why do people say that? Where else is the palm gonna be? Da Srings? For at least Oahu, The Bus takes you pretty much everywhere including the North Shore. It'll take time due to the many stops the bus makes, but for the month that I was there, I saved a lot from not renting a car, which by the way you can get good discounts at discounthawaiicarrental.com.

I sound like a freakin' commercial.

only twenty million a nite

When I go with a girlfriend, I usually stay at hotels. The ladies like the comfort. But when I go alone, I book a stay at hostels. They're cheap, convenient due to their proximity to the beach, and the best part is the communal kitchens/common area. They're highly conducive to meeting people from all over the world. Many think hostels are for young people like us (wink), probably due to their associated name youth hostels. But there's no age limitation, and most have rules like no drugs, alcohol, and quiet times at ten or eleven at night.

Issue with the hostels in Hawaii, specifically Waikiki, is that all of them will let you stay for a limited time, like two weeks. Some even require you to show a plane ticket back where you came from. I've never really understood the logic until I found the one hostel that let people stay indefinitely, which worked for my month stay. When I arrived I mumbled, "What da fuck?"

Where's the toilet paper?

To say this was the worst hostel that I've stayed at would only glaze over the real issue that the Hawaiian Islands is facing, the homeless. My first room consisted of three bunk beds, six guys, and one bathroom.

Now, ladies. If you've ever lived with a man, stayed over a man's place, or gone into a man's bathroom, you understand keeping the water closet clean isn't our number one priority. Getting you to his place was (wink). Now, imagine six dudes with little care to a bathroom that don't belong to them, what do you think the condition of that bathroom would look like? And continue that image with blokes that give less care to hygiene cuz they's took a dip in the Pacific Ocean where things there take a piss. And, yes, I'm talking about kids. Talk about B to the O!

The guys in my room were smoking cigarettes, pot, drinking beer, and laughin' an' hollerin', and keeping me awake. I have to wake up at 5 freakin' A to the freakin' M for work. And all these guys have night jobs. With rent being so cheap, many locals live in these places because the only real industry in Hawaii is tourism.

To make things worse, there's no lockers for me to use. Steal my iPhone, my wallet, my iPad, whatever. It'd suck, but they can be replaced. Steal my work laptop, and I'd lose my job. Every single hostel I've ever stayed at had lockers. You know, things to lock yo shit in. If we be livin' all togethers an'all, with strangers, peeps I've never met before, I's gonna need me a locker.

Common!

Dental care...look into it

And what really capped off this wonderful experience was the process of checking in. What I didn't know then, was the front desk was really just a wooden box at the front of their garage, filled with parking spaces for four cars. This woman, who liked to dress like a man, signed me in with their fancy advanced system of erasing my name from the reservation list, a piece of paper written with pencil, then penning me onto another piece of paper, then logging me into their log book, then writing me a receipt, highlighting it so it's highlighted, and telling me I had to give that back to them along with the room key in order to get my $35 cash deposit back. Can't ya just check my name off your log book that's written in pen. Why do you need this flimsy receipt to give me my deposit back? And let's talk about this young woman's enthusiasm. Done.

What I had found out was most of the front desk people were residents of the hostel. They got free rent for working there. Many quit, which is a small indicator of the working conditions presented by this fine establishment.

Fortunately, I moved to another room with a big black dude, who was the literal definition of gentle giant. Easily the nicest guy in the whole hostel, and very considerate. Another fine dude who spent five years in lockup and actually learned his lesson. And a fifty-seven year old dance instructor and street performer doin' what he luvs.

My new roomies were awesome! Much better than those whipper snappers, who didn't realize that closing the screen door didn't prevent smoke or their loud voices from entering the room. And I don't know why they gave me a key, since no one ever bothered to lock the door, which left the issue of my work laptop.

I could carry it around, but having to worry about that thing 24/7 for the next four weeks would have sucked ass. And yes I have, so I know. Actually, sucking ass was better. Again, fortunate for me, the manager of the place was nice enough to lock it in her office, a door like any door in your house, accessed by one key. No dead bolt, no alarm system (yeah, right. Remember the front desk?), no guard dog. Fantastic. And this woman looked like death with bags under her eyes. You know how you get those baggy eyes when you wake up from an unsatisfying nights sleep? Beat up bags, not the luxury kind from Luis Vuitton. The kind where they've seen Hell, spent a long time there, then for some reason Satan said, "All right. I've decided to let you leave," when He's never let anyone else leave before since the beginning of time. Those bags. But I used my manly wiles to get her to lock up my laptop everyday, a slight inconvenience on her part. Then she got that look in her eye, and I stopped using my manly wiles.

This sounds like an article about not using hostels. Nope. It's an article of what to look for in a hostel. Do they have rules about alcohol, drugs, and quiet time? Is there plenty of parking? Free Weefee? Is there a real communal kitchen. This one was located in another guests' room. Serious? Read the damn reviews, which I did and should have gotten the clue when I saw better reviews at the other hostels. Do the dregs of society live at the hostel? Unlikely if there's limited stay, which most should have. And location (the one redeeming factor here). This one was located in Waikiki, which is what I wanted.

Most hostels have semi-private and private rooms, so lockers may not be a concern if you're reserving that. But all hostels should have lockers. Jeez.

Again, hostels are a great way to meet different people, stay close to the sights, and save cash. You can meet people at hotels, but I found they aren't as conducive.

One last thing is make sure the reviews state the rooms are clean. Bed bugs are a real issue. I was bitten no less than a hundred times, sometimes over a dozen a day. I get Hawaii is a tropical place, and mosquitos are supercharged there, but I got bit a lot while working on my bed. Oh, yeah...my office: